I was raised on chicken soup, peach pie, and old expressions. Growing up, my grandma loved to remind us that "Many hands make light work," or that "Two's company, three's a crowd." Some of her sayings either didn't make much sense to me at the time or were beyond obvious. Although I thought that the saying "Wherever you go, there you are," fell under the latter category, I wouldn't learn till later what she really meant.
If the walls of my family's house in Asheville, North Carolina, could talk, they'd have a lot to say. Home is both a venue and a fortress, the smell of peach waffles in the morning and the mauve tint of my mother's smile. Home is my dog barking on the back porch, the rain drizzling down the whitewashed windowpanes and a vase of blue rhododendron flowers against a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the kitchen window. My bedroom is especially unique. My high school varsity letters still hang just above my jewelry boxes. My bed is still layered with faux-fur pillows and pineapple printed sheets.
Everything has stayed the same.
The four months I've spent in college so far have been some of the most transformative months of my life. I've grown so much as a student, as a writer, as a friend, and as a person. I'm embracing this new chapter of my life, but so much so that coming home for a break seems like a vacation. Now that my life is more grounded in college than ever, I feel like my bedroom at home is part of a happy memory, like an old haunt or hiding place. I can still go back to visit, but it belongs more to a past version of myself than the current version of me.
I used to think that "Wherever you go, there you are" meant that no matter what happened in the past, you would carry those memories with you. But maybe that's not the case. Maybe pieces of yourself linger in the places you go, trapped within the walls of a house as voices only you can hear.
At home, everything has stayed the same. I'm the one who has changed.
